Gzuniga Ltd., a luxury handbag seller, its founder Nancy Teresa Gonzalez de Barberi and Gonzalez's associate, Mauricio Giraldo, were sentenced to prison for illegally importing to the U.S. goods made from protected wildlife from Colombia, DOJ announced April 22.

Florida-based steel traders John Unsalan and Sergey Karpushkin were sentenced to six years and 21 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in a scheme to help Russian oligarch Sergey Kurchenko violate U.S. sanctions, DOJ announced.

Two officials of an Iraq-based weapons dealer -- Syrian national Mohamad Deiry and Lebanese national Samer Rayya -- were charged with conspiring to ship munitions from the U.S. to Sudan and Iraq without a license, DOJ announced. An indictment, unsealed April 15, alleged the pair violated the Arms Export Control Act and conspired to commit money laundering to advance the "illicit procurement activities."

A former North Korean official serving in Thailand, Myong Ho Ri, was charged with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions, bank fraud and money laundering, DOJ announced.

Ross Roggio of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, was sentenced on April 15 to 70 years in prison for torturing an Estonian citizen in 2015 in Iraq and for exporting weapons parts and related services to Iraq, DOJ announced. Roggio was convicted in May of "exporting weapons parts and services to Iraq" without approval, shipping "weapons tools to Iraq," smuggling, wire fraud and money laundering. He sent firearms parts and tools and "illegally trained foreign persons in the operation, assembly, and manufacturing of the M4 automatic rifle," DOJ said.

The EPA on April 10 filed a complaint against California engine lubricant seller USA Wholesale for illegally importing hydrofluorocarbons via a New Mexico port in 2022, marking the first time the agency has filed such a complaint under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020, the agency announced.

The U.S. last week transferred thousands of weapons and rounds of ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces that were confiscated from unflagged vessels en route to Yemen from Iran as part of a civil forfeiture action, DOJ announced on April 9. The shipment included "over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, and RPG-7s, and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition."

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina last week sentenced Alan Nordman, a former CBP employee and North Carolina resident, to one year of probation for illegally selling a customs declaration form signed by a celebrity, Michael Jackson. Judge Kenneth Bell penned the order, which also said that Nordman shall forfeit his interest in the customs form. The North Carolina man pleaded guilty in November to one count of conveyance of a government record for auctioning the form on eBay, where it sold for $795 in 2022.

Former Venezuelan General Cliver Antonio Alcala Cordones was sentenced to 260 months in prison on April 8 for "providing material support" to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced. Starting in around 2006, Alcala Cordones leveraged his position in the military to aid the FARC, including by providing "high-powered weapons to the FARC." He pleaded guilty to "providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization" and transferring firearms with reasonable cause to believe they "would be used to commit a federal crime of terrorism."

Two Russian nationals living in Florida pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to violate the Export Control Reform Act by illegally shipping aviation technology to Russian end users, DOJ announced April 4.